Ch.235[Chapter 235] Bit Them All

[Ogreson: “Are you alright? What in the world is all this?!” ▷▷]

[Arkus: “I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this!” ▷▷]

Ogreson and Arkus escaped the alleyway, terrified by their strangely transformed appearances.

Of course, they had a plan when leaving that place.

As a cleric, Arkus had learned various knowledge at the seminary.

According to what he learned in one of his second-year second-semester electives, “Curses and Mutations,” when a curse or mutation occurs, the first thing to do is to leave the area and escape the curse’s domain.

The reason Arkus remembered this so clearly was because this question appeared as a discriminating problem on the final exam.

At that time, Arkus had written “First analyze the curse and then attempt to break it,” which caused his grades to drop and he missed out on a scholarship…

Anyway, Arkus and Ogreson successfully managed to escape from the area where the mutation was occurring and arrived in the somewhat familiar 3D world.

It seemed that the Orc Magic Girl’s spell was so messy that its effects only manifested in part of Gacha Land.

[Arkus: “It seems this bizarre curse hasn’t spread this far. Now that we’ve escaped the curse’s domain, let’s begin breaking it.” ▷▷]

[Ogreson: “Let’s do it right away. I don’t want to stay in this form any longer. It gives me the creeps.” ▷▷]

Arkus muttered some kind of incantation and soon returned to his original form.

“I’m back. As I thought, this was indeed a curse or mutation type. I feel strangely grateful to the professor who gave me a C- back then. If I had known this would happen, I would have given him 5 stars in the professor evaluation—”

[Ogreson: “Enough! Stop talking and hurry up and free me from this curse too! Am I the only one still cursed?” ▷▷]

At Ogreson’s grumbling, Arkus recited the same incantation and restored Ogreson to his original form.

Of course, for some reason, the two-handed sword Ogreson was holding was still pixelated, but Ogreson himself had returned to normal without issue.

“Phew. Now I finally feel alive.”

Ogreson, despite his large build, sat down like a child and let out a big sigh.

He had been worried about what would happen if the curse couldn’t be broken.

“By the way, what should we do about that now?”

Ogreson glanced at the cursed area.

It was still filled with square pixels, and people there were in a pixelated state just like Ogreson and Arkus had been moments ago.

“It’s beyond my power.”

Arkus said bitterly.

“Just breaking the curse on the two of us has drained my energy. To break a curse of that magnitude… yes, it would take at least a month—”

“Wow, amazing. How did you just break that? You don’t look like a coder?”

“Is it some primitive coding method? Ah, no. That’s it. Holy power.”

Arkus and Ogreson turned to look at those addressing them.

There stood a boy and girl with fluffy, wool-like hair. While Arkus couldn’t remember who these young people were, Ogreson recognized them as the ones they had met at the tavern.

Dr. Banshee and Dr. Phantom.

“Oh? Aren’t you the person we met before!”

When Ogreson brightened up, Dr. Banshee… no, Remi, frowned while looking at Ogreson.

The other person was clearly greeting her with familiarity, but Remi had no recollection whatsoever.

“Have we met before?”

When Remi asked Ogreson, he nodded as if it were obvious.

“You’re the one who helped us when we said we were looking for Sir Dominic.”

“Ah.”

Remi let out a sigh of realization.

“You’re the people from Feralant. I see.”

“By the way, didn’t you just mention something about coders or coding to us?”

Bishop Arkus slipped into the conversation.

“Could you tell us what that is?”

“It’s nothing special. Just… think of it as a type of magic that uses the language of magic. That’s the easiest way to understand it.”

Remi vaguely deflected Bishop Arkus’s question.

In truth, knowledge about coders and coding was common among Gacha Land citizens who were interested in such things, but for some reason, she felt she shouldn’t explain in detail to the people before her.

This was quite the proper response, and it was the result of the System’s invisible intervention.

Bishop Arkus and Ogreson were not recognized as citizens of Gacha Land.

They were visitors temporarily staying in Gacha Land due to a collaboration event, and as such, they would have to return to their original world as soon as the event ended.

The System was managing things to ensure that their world wouldn’t be thrown into chaos by knowledge from Gacha Land when they returned.

Of course, since this was done through subtle and invisible intervention rather than direct methods, it couldn’t completely prevent the acquisition of information.

However, Gacha Land’s central System had already prepared countermeasures for this.

Fortunately, Bishop Arkus seemed to accept Remi’s explanation.

Of course, those formally trained in Gacha Land’s magic might have objected to Remi’s explanation, but Bishop Arkus was ignorant about Gacha Land’s magic, and above all, he had never studied magic at the seminary.

He had taken a required major course called “Comparison of Magic and Theology” in the first semester of his fourth year, but at that time, he was just trying to pass with the minimum grade to graduate.

Naturally, he was extremely ignorant about magic.

“This is a big problem. At this rate, we won’t be able to get back in time.”

“I told you we should eat something simple for lunch. Why did you suddenly get obsessed with visiting that restaurant you saw on SNS—”

Remi and Dr. Phantom grumbled for different reasons as they looked at the area that had transformed into 8-bit.

Some might have guessed from the absence of Android Zero, who usually followed Remi and Dr. Phantom, but currently, Android Zero was being updated.

The two had gone to the industrial district to buy new parts to fix a yellowing vision issue caused by overheating problems that suddenly occurred after the previous update.

They had already purchased all the necessary parts for the update hours ago, but thinking they had some time to spare, they had ventured a bit farther and ended up isolated by this anomaly.

Of course, one might ask why they couldn’t just take a detour, but the anomaly that had suddenly occurred in part of the Market Area had spread so unexpectedly that no one knew how far it extended.

“We have no choice. We’ll have to go through this.”

Remi deliberately ignored Dr. Phantom’s words and looked at the anomaly before them.

“The System seems fine, but it looks like there’s a problem with the resolution.”

“So, 3840X2160?”

“That’s 4K. Isn’t that too much? Let’s compromise with 1920×1080. There are rendering issues too, you know.”

Remi and Dr. Phantom began discussing how to overcome this situation in an incomprehensible language.

“…What in the world are they talking about?”

Ogreson whispered to Arkus.

They were already focused on the situation and couldn’t properly hear what was being said, but the atmosphere seemed to call for hushed tones.

“I don’t know. It seems they’re using that coding language of magic they mentioned earlier…”

Arkus also replied to Ogreson with a perplexed expression.

“There’s nothing for us to do. Let’s go sit in that corner for a while.”

Arkus pointed to a nearby bench.

Ogreson nodded in agreement with Arkus’s statement that there was nothing they could do, and followed behind Arkus, who had already started walking toward the bench.

And he glanced at Remi and Dr. Phantom, who had begun an in-depth discussion about some incomprehensible theory.

“How many pixels are there right now?”

“Just a moment… Ah, here it is. 304X224. It says 320X224, but it’s cropped due to Gacha Land’s aspect ratio.”

“Good. Now that we know the resolution, how do we restore it to the original quality…”

As Remi and Dr. Phantom continued their heated discussion, Ogreson sighed, saying he couldn’t understand a word they were saying, and sat down next to Bishop Arkus, who was already sitting on the bench staring blankly at the sky, and continued to watch the two doctors.

“—Alright. This way the graphics won’t break and will return to normal.”

“But it’s quite complicated. Isn’t there a simpler method?”

“There probably is. But we don’t have time. We need to get back quickly and finish Zero’s update.”

Unaware that Ogreson was staring blankly at them, Remi and Dr. Phantom continued to seek a way to restore the quality, and soon they stood up, seemingly having found a solution.

Though it wasn’t explicitly stated, it had been 2 hours and 30 minutes since they began discussing countermeasures.